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I was invited to the podcast “Hey, How’d You Get That Music Job???” to talk about my journey into the music industry and growth as a music industry professional. This was quite the vulnerable discussion as I explored my past as far back as a child aspiring artist, my YOLO move to Los Angeles as a homeless teen, and the founding of my first music companies as a senior at a UCLA. If hearing how I navigated hurdles and barriers to entry to become a 3x exited music tech entrepreneur and Billboard recognized music business educator, have a listen to this podcast episode.

UNCONVENTIONAL MONEY: Royalty Sources You Might Not Think Of To license your music is to monetize your music.

Whether it be via marching band, show choir, orchestra rentals, iPhone apps, online games and uses, wedding videos, photograph montages – the possibilities are endless. Join us for an exploration of non-traditional outlets and how the variety of them just might surprise you.

Reservations accepted online at www.aimp.org or by telephone at 818-771-7301 until Wednesday, September 26th at noon. Advance registration deadline with entree choice also ends on Wednesday, September 26th at noon. Premier Members and/or groups of 5 or more who have RSVP’d and paid online may request reserved seating by e-mail or phone, 818-771-7301. We will do our best to accommodate late reservations made the day before the event, but please be advised that entrée selection and space may be limited. Online reservations can be paid online by credit card. Payment at the door is by cash, check or credit card (with a $5 surcharge). Those who walk up without a reservation will be served whatever is available, but most likely prime rib, and may have to wait at entry. Full-time students with a current student I.D. – $47.00 per person*
*Qualifying students must reserve by phone and pay in advance by check or at the door. There are no online reservation or payment services for this discounted rate.NOTE TO BERKLEE ALUMNI: If you are inquiring in response to a special offer via the Berklee Newsletter, please email LAinfo@aimp.org for registration instructions.

Attention Students! The AIMP has launched its education initiative at Lawry’s. What this means is that up to 8 students are allowed to attend each panel for $20 per person. The fee does not include food. This is a great opportunity to learn about music publishing and network. You must RSVP and pay in advance via e-mail or by calling 818-771-7301.

Attention attorneys: this activity has been approved for 1.0 hour of Minimum Continuing Legal Education Credit by the State Bar of California. Attorneys wishing to register for MCLE credit should bring their state bar number with them for the sign in sheet.[Pick up your certificate at the luncheon – AIMP cannot issue certificates after-the-fact.]

Additional Speaker Information

Landon Austin is the co-founder and President of Noisely which is a licensing search engine for content creators. His career began as a creator where he gained a large online following from finishing top 3 in Dorito’s Crash The Super Bowl competition. His music videos on YouTube have accumulated over 25M vews and resulted in an international touring schedule and over 1.5M monthly listeners on Spotify. In 2017 Landon transitioned to an executive and founder role with Noisely to help bridge the gap between traditional publishing and the necessity for a more streamlined approach to licensing music in smaller applications such as wedding videography, photography, in-app music, YouTube and more. Noisely is currently focused on working with publishers and helping them to launch their own white-label micro-licensing platforms to increase bottom line revenues through access to niche markets.

Dae Bogan is a music rights executive, serial entrepreneur, music creators’ rights advocate, and educator with over a decade of experience in the music industry. Through his boutique music rights & technology consulting firm, Rights Department, Dae assists tech founders license and bring their products and services to market. Dae also works with small to medium-sized music rightsholders to help them navigate and evaluate new media deal terms. He has worked with Beatshare, mydiveo (acquired), PicPlayPost, Acappella, Stryve, WeGo Concerts, and many others.

A serial entrepreneur, Larry Mills has forged his way in the entertainment business over a 25-year career, which has seen him start Record Labels, Marketing Companies, Management Companies, and most recently as Co-President of music licensing company Tresona Music. Tresona is the world’s leader in the issuance of custom arrangement licenses. Tresona exclusively represents the catalogs of Sony/ATV, EMI, Universal Music Publishing, Kobalt, BMG, the catalogs of Hal Leonard, Disney and nearly 7,000 other music publishers for these rights. Tresona’s world class technology makes the licensing process seamless, and currently works with nearly 10,000 performing ensembles worldwide. Larry’s career kicked off with a record company he founded, Steam Records, which was started in the kitchen of his apartment in Atlanta back in 1992. Steam put out early releases by Rusted Root, Lisa Loeb, Shawn Mullins, Kristian Bush (Sugarland) and others. Soon after starting Steam, Larry was brought in to run Autonomous Records, another independent label, which spawned the careers of Sister Hazel and Creed. Autonomous was sold to Roadrunner Records in 1997. After that acquisition, Larry was brought in to run marketing for Pump Audio, the independent music licensing company, which was ultimately sold to Getty Images. After the acquisition, Larry ran the music division of Getty Images for 3.5 years. In 2011, Larry was recruited to be the VP, Strategic Marketing for Sony/ATV Music Publishing. During his tenure, he conceptualized and realized We Are The Hits, which is an on-line music video network, predominantly on YouTube, which allows the aspiring artists of the world to share in the advertising revenue from their cover songs, legally. Currently WATH generates over 3 Billion views a year on YouTube and pays out millions of dollars a year to both songwriters and independent artists. Larry acquired WATH in 2013 from Sony, and at that time partnered with Tresona.

Mitch Rubin is Vice President of Label & Publisher Services at Dubset Media, which offers an innovative music marketplace for artists, labels, publishers, distributors, and DJs. Through cutting edge technology, a rights management database, and easy to use dashboards, Dubset creates new mix & remix distribution and monetization opportunities built on transparency, ownership control, and simplicity. Mitch held senior management positions as a music publisher and for a digital music service, both in the United States and Internationally. He was an integral member of the team that grew BMG Music Publishing into the third largest music publisher in the world prior to its acquisition by Universal Music Publishing in 2006. Among his more notable accomplishments were developing BMG’s production music library business, now the largest in the world and, as Managing Director, turning around and growing the historically unprofitable Australia/New Zealand operation. Immediately prior to Dubset, Mitch was the Global Head of Licensing, Composition Rights, for Nokia, Microsoft, and MixRadio (a division of Line Corp). In that role, he oversaw the licensing of composition rights and managing rights holder relationships in more than 40 countries for such innovative products as Comes With Music and MixRadio. He concluded and managed dozens of agreements, many of which required bespoke licensing solutions due to lack of commercial precedents. Mitch joined the startup Dubset Media in early 2017.

Michael Eames is President of PEN Music Group, Inc. Founded in April 1994, PEN is a full-service independent music publishing company with a worldwide presence who is celebrating its 23rd anniversary in 2017. PEN offers efficiency and personal attention as a boutique company. With PEN’s A-list music contacts in film, TV and advertising, and a success rate that continues to grow (with 100+ placements each year), it is an effective alternative to the large multinational publishing companies. Eames and PEN proudly represent the catalogues of writer/artists as diverse as: JOHN FARRAR (legendary producer of Olivia Newton-John who wrote many of her biggest hits); DON FELDER (formerly of The Eagles who co-wrote the classic copyright “Hotel California”); Oscar®-winner DONNY MARKOWITZ (including the smash hit “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” from DIRTY DANCING); OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN herself; Grammy®-nominated artist/producer WENDY WALDMAN (who co-wrote “Save The Best For Last”); Emmy®- nominated lyricist AMY POWERS; GINA SCHOCK of the Go-Gos; the estates of late composers EARLE HAGEN and ALLYN FERGUSON who between them co-wrote classic TV themes such as The Andy Griffith Show, Barney Miller (and its spinoff Fish), Mod Squad, I Spy , Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and The Dick Van Dyke Show, and many others. PEN is also well known for supporting and developing indie buzz artists such as Kimberly Cole and ShyBoy (both of whom have over 1 million followers on Twitter), as well as many other up-and-coming artists and writers. PEN has also recently begun to represent the videogame scores owned by Zenimax Media which include the Elder Scrolls franchise. PEN’s songs have been recorded by artists including The Black Eyed Peas, Celine Dion, the cast of GLEE, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, Cazzette, kd lang, Santana, Christina Aguilera, Corinne Bailey Rae, Faith Hill, Paulina Rubio, Macy Gray, Kenny Rogers and Luther Vandross, among countless others. In the current climate of change in the music business, PEN has also partnered with various independent labels such as Oglio Records and Cheap Lullaby Records to leverage collective strengths. PEN has similarly been entering into joint ventures with respected music executives who start their own companies, most notably Eddie Gomez (formerly of Bug Music) who launched his Little Brother Music in 2012 and Lynn Grossman whose Secret Road Music Services manages Ingrid Michaelson and is a very successful company licensing music to film/TV/ads.Register for this event now by clicking here.

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When I managed artists, I made this “Song Processing Checklist” to keep track of everywhere that I was aware of to register my artists’ music. It was daunting. TuneRegistry simplifies this.

Nearly 10 years ago I founded my first music company. It was called Renaissance Artist Management (RAM Artist) and I managed DJs who I had for several years prior booked often to play club events that I produced while in undergrad at UCLA. Some of these DJs were also aspiring music producers, so later I launched Loft24 Records and Loft24 Publishing to help them collaborate with artists and topliners. I picked name Loft24 because I was 24 years old and I lived in a loft in Downtown Los Angeles, which had been a goal of mine since my youth (I have no idea why). I had also signed my first two live acts – a singer/songwriter and a rapper/songwriter — after producing a multi-city mall talent search tour for Reebok…they were the winners.

Prior to founding RAM Artist, Loft24 Records, and Loft24 Publishing, I had some music business exposure having grew up in a multi-generational music family and having been an aspiring musician myself, but my knowledge was nowhere near as expansive as it is today (insert a lot of self-teaching and an eventual masters degree in music business).

One of the things I was really good at as a manager and music entrepreneur was creating systems and processes to make workflows efficient. This was necessary considering all of the tasks I had to juggle as an artist manager, label owner, and music publisher. And I had a daytime job as VP of Marketing & Partnerships of a youth-targeted retail chain and founder/GM of its music division.

I had previously built database-driven e-commerce systems at two companies where I had worked in marketing; and with a history of event production, I was generally a very logistical and process-oriented person.

At the time that I was managing artists, DJs, producers, songwriters and marketing music, I was unaware of software that would make my life easier in these administrative tasks. So, I built my own.

I had previously developed a checklist of everywhere that I was aware of where my client’s music needed to be registered before it was released. I used this “Song Processing Checklist” for every work in our catalog. I’d manually login to ASCAP and the Copyright Office systems to register works and record confirmation numbers. It was daunting!

To pitch our catalog, I built an internal platform called “Music Licensing Portal” (basically an early version of what DISCO or SourceAudio is today). I’d invite music supervisors to search our catalog and initiate sync license requests.

Then I built what would be my first music tech startup, SongBank, a marketplace where A&R’s could shop for unpublished songs using an audio fingerprint of a reference songs. SongBank was described as a robust cloud-based project management platform developed specifically for songwriters and record label A&Rs (I’m still unaware of anything like it on the market). I wanted to help undiscovered songwriters get placements on major label projects after my experience pitching my writers to A&Rs. I had brought on advisers who were A&Rs or VP of A&R at Hollywood Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Roc Nation, and Atlantic Records. I later stopped working on SongBank to launch Maven Promo (formerly ChazBo Music), which is an in-store independent music video network, which I sold to EMPIRE Distribution last year to fund the development and launch of RoyaltyClaim, the world’s first search engine of unclaimed music royalties, which I later sold to Haawk Inc and then to Made In Memphis Entertainment this year.

TuneRegistry is a software like no other. I conceptualized it based on all of the above experience (although I had been working on it prior to RoyaltyClaim). What started as a Word Doc checklist of places to register my client’s songs has evolved into a robust software to streamline the process of registering works across rights organizations, delivering music metadata across the music industry, the management of disputes and conflicts, and the insurance of royalty accountability, all in one place.

We had a setback for a few months, when I had to buy the company back from a company that had acquired it in 2017, but will be launching an new and improved platform on October 1st and I can’t wait

(Photos below are of the tools and platforms that I referenced above. I built these in my early twenties to operate my music companies and manage my clients’ careers more efficiently.)

I shared my thoughts on music business for Hip-Hop producers in this piece by Cherie Hu for Pitchfork:

“The way many of these companies are trying to match and verify their data? Hundreds of emails,” says Dae Bogan, founder and CEO of TuneRegistry, a rights management platform for indie artists. “Many labels are still using old software and systems to manage their digital catalog, and their rights department is different from the one responsible for metadata, which is different from the one responsible for collecting royalties. There’s a lot of bureaucracy involved.”

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I am looking forward to joining a number of colleagues at Music Industry Quarterly Magazins (MIQ) & Urban Network Digital’s the 5th annual The Business of Music Conference and speaking on the panel “Managing Artists in the Streaming Era”.

Digital streaming is one of the most important arenas in all of the music buisness. We will discuss the variety of streaming options, subscription services, breaking new artists, royalty options, and the power of playlists.

Along with Erin Collins (SESAC) and Thomas Golubić (Music Supervisor), I will be discussing on the panel “View From Here” blockchain technology and the possible impact it may have on how artists are paid, how performance royalties are tracked, what impact it may have on music licensing and other issues that may emerge from this exciting new technology.